


Sight for Sore Eyes

by bigficenergy



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: A hint of Stevie/Ruth, Episode: s07e13 The New Addition, Glasses, M/M, Married Life, POV Patrick Brewer, Reading, Self Image, Valentine's Day, cooking mishap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29305323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigficenergy/pseuds/bigficenergy
Summary: Patrick suspects that David needs reading glasses. David says he's fine. But something's been off since David came back from the optometrist...
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 24
Kudos: 171
Collections: Schitt's Creek Season 7





	Sight for Sore Eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCSeason7](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCSeason7) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> 7x13 - The New Addition. Some sign of aging (grey hairs, reading glasses , wrinkles...) and all the comfort and gentle teasing and convincing him he's still sexy that goes along with it.

Patrick loves coming home to David.

It doesn’t happen as often as it might if they didn’t work together, but over time, Patrick’s social circle in Schitt’s Creek expands, and sometimes he and David have separate evening plans. And though he loves how much time he gets to spend with his husband every day, having new friends and things to do makes Patrick feel more settled into his life than ever.

Depending on how late he’s out, sometimes David will still be up when he gets home. When Patrick joined Bob’s poker night – mostly to catch up with Ray and to try to win money off of Ronnie – David and Stevie started using those nights as their hangout time. Sometimes, he’ll come home to them stoned and giggling over something neither of them can articulate, and sometimes he’ll be just in time to break up a squabble over a board game. Other nights, like when the softball team meets up at the Wobbly Elm, David will be asleep when Patrick gets home, which means he gets to crawl into bed, snuggle up, and pass out with his face pressed against David’s shoulder.

But by far, Patrick’s favorite sight to come home to is David in their bed, still awake, getting a little reading in before he goes to sleep. The first time he got to see this in their new home, he’d just returned from a successful poker night, a little tipsy and a few bucks richer. David had been so engrossed in his book, he didn’t look up until Patrick had been leaning in the doorway for at least a full minute, just looking at him.

“Um, hi?” David had said, a little bemused.

“Sometimes I still can’t believe I get to call you my husband,” Patrick had said, or something to that effect.

He remembers with crystal clarity, however, how David had responded.

Setting his book down on the nightstand and patting Patrick’s side of the bed, he’d said, “Come over here and tell me more.”

\---

Tonight, on his way home from watching a Jays game with some of his softball teammates, Patrick suspects that’s how he’ll find David. Stevie is currently away on Rosebud business, and David has been devouring the third installment some sort of thriller series gifted to him by his mother. When the package had arrived at Christmas, containing four books with cracked spines, Patrick had thought that Mrs. Rose, busy with her latest television project, had forgotten to get David a gift and just sent something she’d had on hand. It quickly became clear that actually, another commonality between Mrs. Rose and her son was their eclectic taste in literature, and Mrs. Rose had simply vetted the series herself before passing it along to David.

When Patrick gets to their little cottage home, he breezes in, tosses his keys onto the table near the door, and jogs upstairs. But when he swings the bedroom door open, he stops short. The room is dark, and in the light from the hall, he sees the curled up lump of David beneath the covers. It’s early for him to be asleep, but Patrick shrugs to himself, stepping quietly into the room, closing the door gently behind him, and tip-toeing to the dresser to get his pajamas. He trips on something, maybe one of David’s weekender bags, catching himself on the dresser with a soft grunt.

“Sorry.”

David’s muffled voice startles Patrick. He laughs and heads over to the nightstand.

“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just gonna turn the light on for a sec–”

“ _Please don’t._ ”

The plea sounds urgent and miserable, so Patrick leaves the light off and crouches next to the bed, placing a hand on David’s blanket covered shoulder.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“ _Headache,_ ” David whines into his pillow.

Patrick tuts, carding his fingers gently through David’s hair. “Did you take something for it?”

“It’s not working.”

“Did you have enough water today? I can get you a glass.”

“Oh _god_ , then on top of the migraine, I’ll… you know…”

“You only do that when you’re excited,” Patrick reminds him. “So unless you’re super pumped about discussing the regional Rosebud product restock with Roland in the morning, I think you’ll be fine.”

David just grumbles.

“You know, lately when you’ve been getting these headaches, you’ve either been reading or working on a computer. Maybe you should get your eyes checked out. You could need–”

“Please do _not_ suggest something that would require me to update my entire look while my head is full of rocks.”

“It's common around your– around _our_ age. If you just need reading glasses–”

“ _Patrick._ ”

“Okay, okay I’m sorry.” Patrick leans down and kisses David _very_ gently on the top of his head. “I’ll be quiet. Try to sleep.”

Patrick grabs what he needs and leaves the room to get ready for bed in the bathroom. By the time he comes back, David is asleep.

\---

“Do you think you could open without me on Wednesday morning?”

They’re in the afternoon lull at the store, and Patrick doesn’t even look up from the order he’s placing on the computer at the register, replying mildly, “You usually come in an hour late, so I usually open without you.”

“Okay,” David huffs, and Patrick knows he’s rolling his eyes over by the shelves he’d been working on. “Can you manage without me until lunch on Wednesday then?”

“Maybe. Why?”

David mutters something, and Patrick looks up to see that his back is fully turned to him, and he’s fumbling with the now-empty box he’d been stocking from.

“Sorry, what was that?”

This time when David mumbles, Patrick catches the word “appointment.”

“Did you say ‘appointment’? Well, that depends. Are we talking medical? Dental? Cosmetic?”

David spins around to fix him with a _look_.

“ _Fine._ I have an appointment to see an… optometrist,” David finally admits in a reluctant staccato.

Patrick sighs, his teasing smile gentling. “Of course I can cover for the morning. And David, it’s gonna be fine. If you end up needing glasses or contacts, it’s not the end of the world.”

“Mm, we’ll see,” David says grimly, heading for the back room.

\---

It’s nearly 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and David still hasn’t returned from his appointment. It’s been busy enough at the store that Patrick hasn’t had much time to worry, or to do more than shoot David a quick check-in text. He’s relieved, when he glances out the window in the middle of ringing up a transaction, to see David heading into the Cafe.

The store has cleared out by the time David pushes through the door with lunch for both of them.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says with the little lilt he sometimes uses when he thinks he’s in trouble. “But I got you the grilled chicken with a side salad _and_ fries so you have options. You can go eat first, I’ll cover.”

“Thanks,” Patrick says, taking the bag of food. “How did it go?”

“Hmm?”

“Your appointment, David.”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” David says with a dismissive wave, fussing with the line of lip balms on the counter.

“Yeah? So you have perfect 20/20 vision, then?”

“I’m thinking maybe we should change the lightbulbs we use.”

“The lightbulbs?”

“Yeah I mean, if my eyes are fine, maybe the… the lights are too harsh, and that’s what’s causing my headaches.”

Patrick tilts his head, suspicious. “The bulbs here or at home?”

“Both?”

“Huh.” Patrick pauses for a moment, then asks, “You’re sure everything’s alright?”

David stops what he’s doing, takes a deep breath, and places his hands on top of Patrick’s, where he’s holding the takeout bag.

“I’m fine, I promise,” he says, looking right into Patrick’s eyes. “Now please go eat, because I will need to eat soon too.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, giving David a peck on the lips. “I know.”

\---

Patrick quietly keeps an eye on David for the next week, but he does seem fine. He replaces the bulbs in the lamps in their bedroom, a solution that Patrick is still skeptical of, but David doesn’t complain of anymore headaches, so it’s good enough for him.

It’s not until nearly a week and a half after David’s appointment that Patrick realizes he hasn’t actually seen David read before bed since he’d changed the bulbs. Stevie’s in town, so most nights that Patrick has plans, David is with her, or he’s asleep when Patrick gets home. Nights that they go to bed together, they have other activities to end the evening with.

What finally tips him off that something is up is one morning, when he’s just about to head out to the store and David is still puttering around in the kitchen, he notices David’s book on the sofa. It’s the fourth installment of the series he’d been working on. Patrick picks it up.

“You’re on the next book?”

“What?” David calls, coming into the living room with his coffee.

Patrick holds up the book. “I didn’t know you’d finished the third one.”

“Oh. Yeah, I got a few chapters in here and there.”

Patrick looks back at the book in his hand. There’s really no reason for him to doubt David. It just seems odd that the book is on the sofa instead of in the bedroom, where David had made a point to use different lightbulbs, supposedly for the sake of his eyes. And it’s a little odd that Patrick hasn’t seen him read at all in over a week, but it could just be the timing of their schedules. He looks back up, not sure what he means to say, but David has already retreated back into the kitchen, so he just puts the book back where he found it.

When they come home from the store that evening, the book is no longer on the sofa.

\---

The book turns up in a few other places over the next several days – back in the bedroom, on the kitchen table, and once in the bathroom. Still, Patrick hasn’t once seen David actually reading the book. At first, he wonders if David did need glasses, and instead of getting some, he’s suffering through his headaches and hiding it from him. But the thing about David is that he’s not one to suffer quietly in pains great or miniscule. So Patrick tosses that theory out.

Still he’s sure something is going on. One night, he dozes off while waiting for David to finish his nightly skincare routine. He wakes to David climbing into bed, and when he looks at the clock, he finds that it’s much later than he’d expected.

“What took you so long?” he asks groggily.

“I was texting Stevie,” David says, turning out his lamp.

“In the bathroom?”

“It was urgent.”

“Too urgent for you to bring it to bed?”

“She’s panicking about her long-distance Valentine’s Day date with Ruth.”

That doesn’t really answer Patrick’s question, but he’s drowsy and the way David is snuggling up to him is pushing him back toward sleep.

“Did you help her?” he manages to ask, muffled as he turns his face into David’s hair.

“Uh-huh,” David says with a yawn. “I was very helpful.”

“‘M sure you were,” Patrick mumbles, drifting off before he can ask any other questions.

\---

“Do you feel like maybe we–”

“–didn’t think this through?” Patrick says, finishing Stevie’s sentence for her. “Yeah, I’m getting that sense.”

It’s Valentine’s Day, and they’re sitting across from each other in a booth at the Cafe, each dressed for their respective dates. The context is that Stevie, whose Skype date isn’t until later because Ruth is on business in a different time zone, agreed to “distract” Patrick while David finished setting up whatever he has planned for them at home. However, what they didn’t take into account is that Stevie, with her tousled hair and leather jacket, and Patrick, with a fresh haircut and the sharp new navy blue jacket David had helped him pick out, look as much like a couple as any of the actual couples who had come to the Cafe for their Valentine’s Day dinner.

Originally, Patrick was just going to hang out in the motel office with Stevie until she got the all-clear from David to send him home, but David was taking longer than expected and Stevie was getting antsy. Patrick suggested they go get a drink at the Cafe to pass the time, which Stevie had agreed to gratefully. She seems to regret the decision now, as she grimaces at the pink and red paper hearts and cupids decorating the Cafe walls. She pulls her phone out with a sigh.

“It’s fine,” Patrick reassures her. “It’s a small town, everyone know I’m married to David, no one’s going to think–”

“It’s a small town,” Stevie repeats, as she taps out another text to David. “All it takes is one person bored enough to start a rumor.”

Patrick shrugs. “You could do worse.”

Stevie looks up, glaring. “So could you.”

Patrick kicks at her teasingly under the table until she sets her phone down and puts on the best serious face she can muster.

“Playing footsie with me isn’t gonna help our case,” she says, right before kicking him solidly in the foot. He’s still recovering when Twyla comes to their table with their drinks.

“Sorry for the hold up. Busy evening,” she says, setting a wine glass down in front of Stevie and a beer in front of Patrick. “You know, if I didn’t know you guys, I’d think you were here on a date like the rest of these couples.”

“It occurred to us,” Patrick says thinly, at the same time that Stevie says, flatly, “I don’t see it.”

“Well, in any case, I’ll go ahead and give you the lovebirds discount. Our little secret.”

Twyla winks and heads back to the counter before they can protest. Stevie’s phone buzzes on the table, and she picks it up with one hand while lifting her wine glass with the other. She takes a long drink before responding to the text.

“So what’s the verdict? Can I go home yet?” Patrick asks.

“He’s still saying not yet, but you probably should. He’s all but burnt the house down.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Maybe. What I know for sure is that I’ve been babysitting you much longer than I originally agreed to.”

Patrick laughs, picking at the label on his beer bottle. After a beat, he asks, “Hey, have you noticed anything… odd going on with David?”

“Only everyday since I met him. Wanna narrow that down for me?”

“I think something’s been off since he went to see an optometrist. He said he was fine, but… I don’t know. I know he didn’t even want to think about the possibility of needing glasses, but he’d been getting such bad headaches, I can’t imagine he’d be…”

Stevie smirks when Patrick pauses. “What, vain enough to choose pain over altering his look?”

“Not _vain_ , just…”

“It’s okay, you can say it. This is a safe space.”

“I’m just saying, he says he’s fine, but I feel like I’m missing something.”

Stevie’s phone buzzes in her hand. She raises an eyebrow at the new text.

“Any chance those headaches are from smoke inhalation? He just set off the smoke detector again.”

“Okay, that’s it.” Patrick takes one more sip of his barely-touched beer before standing and buttoning his jacket. “I really appreciate whatever he’s trying to do, but I’m going home while I still have a home to go to.”

“I think that’s wise,” Stevie says, pocketing her phone and toying with the stem of her glass. “And hey, if David is being weird just ask him what’s going on. You know things work out better when you guys talk.” She pauses for a sip of wine, and before Patrick can respond, she adds, “Or don’t, and eventually I’ll get it out of him.”

Patrick scoffs, taking out enough cash to cover their drinks and setting it on the table.

“What happened to being a safe space?”

“I only loosen these lips for the greater good.”

“Noble of you. But I’ll try to keep it from coming to that. And hey, good luck with your date, Stevie. It’s gonna be great.”

Stevie pushes her hair behind her ear, not looking at Patrick, but smiling at her glass.

“Thanks.”

\---

Patrick stops off at a flower shop to pick up a fresh bunch of dahlias before heading home. When he gets to the house, all of the windows are open, so Stevie probably wasn’t exaggerating about the smoke alarm.

The click of the front door as he opens it is drowned out by a clatter in the kitchen, and a deeply distraught, “ _Fuck!_ ” Patrick grimaces and heads for the kitchen, where he finds David hunched over the counter, his back to him, cursing at what looks like a recipe open on his laptop. He hasn’t heard Patrick, and Patrick realizes that means there’s no way to announce his presence without startling David at this point. He steels himself and clears his throat gently.

“David–”

As expected, David jumps. When he turns to face Patrick, he reveals that he’s wearing the all-over chili pepper print apron one of Patrick’s softball teammates had given them at their housewarming party. But more importantly, all of Patrick’s questions are suddenly answered.

Because David is also wearing a pair of glasses.

They’re simple, thin, rectangular frames, and paired with the apron and the flustered look on David’s face, he looks _very_ cute, and Patrick has to bite his lip to stop from grinning.

And then David recovers from the surprise, pulling the glasses off and flinging them off to the side somewhere.

“David!” Patrick exclaims. “I already saw them!”

“I know,” David says, squeezing his eyes shut and covering them with his hands. “I know, I don’t know why I did that.”

Patrick takes in the state of the kitchen, the sink full of cookware, the lingering smell of something burnt, and decides to start with the glasses. He sets the flowers on the kitchen table, and goes to retrieve the glasses from the floor. They’re inexpensive, but they survived the fall. He wipes a smudge off of them with the end of his sweater.

“Okay. So… you were just never going to read in front of me again?”

“No no no,” David says, waving his hands to dismiss the idea. “This, _those_ , were supposed to be temporary. They _are_ temporary. Okay, yes, the optometrist recommended reading glasses, so I went online and immediately found a pair that will compliment my bone structure, but they’re backordered and it’s going to be weeks before they’re back in, so I went to the pharmacy and picked the least horrible pair off a rack to hold me over.”

Patrick shakes his head, looking down at the glasses in his hand with a small laugh. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I don’t care if–”

“It’s me, okay? I know you’re sensible and that you don’t care, but _I_ care. If this is going to be something I have to commit to for the rest of my life, I just wanted to know I liked what I’d chosen for myself before anyone else saw.”

Patrick nods. “Yeah, okay, I understand. But why not pick a pair that you liked that you could get faster in the meantime? We could’ve gone out to Elm Glen and shopped around, tried to find you some better options.”

“I was _trying_ to… be practical. To save a little money. The ones I wanted were expensive, so I didn’t want to pile on. I do listen when you talk about budgeting.” He puts his hands on his hips and adds softly, “Sometimes.”

“Huh,” Patrick says, processing this. “Is it weird that I find that kind of sexy?”

“Yes, but I accept that about you.”

Patrick smiles. “And I accept that this,” he gestures with the glasses, “is very personal for you. As long as you know that you _can_ share anything with me. I’m never gonna love you any less.”

“I know.”

“Okay.” Patrick hands the glasses to David, tilting his head to encourage him to meet his eyes. “Now… what happened with all of this?”

David’s expression goes all pinched again, and he groans. “Okay, I thought I could do this! I was supposed to be Amy Adams, you were supposed to be Chris Messina, and I was going to make you Julia’s boeuf bourguignon.”

“Aw, David–”

“But it turned into an unmitigated disaster! It all started when I left the beef in the oven too long, and then I knocked half of the chopped carrots onto the floor. And then it was just the stress of getting all the steps right, which I was pretty sure I did. It was in the oven and I thought I was in the clear, so I took a little break, a little… two and a half hour break… and then when it was almost done, I was going to get everything else ready. I came back in here, poured myself a glass of the wine I had cooked our meal in, and it’s only then that I realized…”

David grabs the wine bottle sitting on the counter next to the stove and hands it to Patrick. At first, Patrick doesn’t understand what the problem is. It looks like a nice bottle of wine. It’s obviously from their store, the label is one that David had created as a collaboration with the winery and…

“Oh,” Patrick says, when he realizes _which_ winery.

“That’s right,” David says. “I destroyed our beautiful meal but putting _Herb Ertlinger’s fruit wine_ into _Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon_.” 

“Well, on the bright side, our branding makes this look like a _very_ nice bottle of wine.” He looks at the dutch oven sitting atop the stove. “I mean, did you try it? Are you sure it’s–”

“Oh I did,” David says. “And I deeply regret agreeing to this collaboration. Some bridges should just stay burned.” When Patrick moves toward the stove, David blocks his way. “You will have to take my word for it, because I cannot serve _that_ to you in good conscience. And then of course…”

David grabs the laptop off the counter and, to Patrick’s surprise, puts on his glasses as he scrolls through whatever page he has open.

“...as I was trying to find some sort of food hack to salvage this travesty,” David continues, “I lost track of everything else, so the mushrooms and the bread burned, and now we have…” he slams the laptop closed “...no Valentine’s Day dinner.”

He puts the laptop back down and puts his hands back on his hips, and not for the first time, Patrick looks at his frazzled husband standing before him, and just feels so charmed. The glasses and the apron are so cute, and the effort he’d made is so impressive, and the mixup with the wine is so unfortunate but also so funny, it’s all Patrick can do to not laugh, because laughing would only make David feel worse. So he just looks at him with so much fondness, for a very long moment, until David realizes he’s put the glasses back on and quickly reaches up to pull them off.

“Okay, let’s not throw those again,” Patrick says quickly, setting the wine back on the counter and reaching for the hand David has the glasses in, pulling it down to hold in both of his. “David, I appreciate this incredible effort you put into this dinner. I mean it when I say that the thought counts for so much. Things happen. Why don’t we order in, and while we wait, we’ll clean up a bit, and then maybe we can take another crack at this recipe together sometime.”

David breathes a long, heavy sigh. “That sounds nice.”

“Good.” He leans in to kiss David. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

David hums contently and kisses him again. He frees his hand from Patrick’s grip to put his glasses on the counter. Patrick’s eyes follow the movement, and David smirks.

“Should I brace myself to be asked to wear those later tonight?”

“I wouldn’t make you do that. But I wouldn’t be opposed to it either,” Patrick says, leaning in again to kiss David’s grinning mouth.

\---

An unexpected downpour in early March forces the Cafe Tropical softball team to move practice to the nearest indoor batting cage, all the way in Elm Valley. After practice, dinner with the team, and a careful drive back in the rain, Patrick finally returns home for the night. He kicks off his soggy shoes, hangs his coat up, and stows his gear in the downstairs closet before quickly and quietly making his way upstairs.

The bedroom door is open a crack and the light is on, so Patrick pushes it open and leans against the doorframe. David is awake, sitting up in bed, his phone held up to his face while he scrolls through something. His latest book, some mystery novel he found when he “helped” Stevie go through the motel’s storage, sits on the nightstand.

“Finished that one already?” Patrick asks.

“Mhm,” David replies, not putting his phone down.

Patrick waits, and eventually, David sighs, letting his hands fall onto his lap and fully revealing what he had half-heartedly been hiding: a new pair of glasses. They’re definitely higher quality than his other ones, which David had continued to be shy about wearing around Patrick, even once he knew about them. Patrick hadn’t pushed, and he can already tell now that David feels better about this new pair that he’d gotten to be selective about. The frames are thicker, wider and more rounded than the first pair. It’s a look that Patrick could definitely get used to.

“Wow,” Patrick breathes.

“Yeah?” David asks, pressing the back of his index finger against the corner of the frames to push them up a little. “They arrived this afternoon, but I wanted to see them on before you saw them.”

“Do you like them?”

“They’ll do,” David says, but the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth suggests that he’s a little more satisfied than that. “Do you?”

“Well,” Patrick says, pushing off the doorframe and heading into the room, “you know that I thought the other ones were just fine.”

David rolls his eyes as Patrick climbs onto the bed.

“ _But_ ,” he continues, “these ones are very _you_.”

Sitting up close now, Patrick can see that the frames aren’t solid black, but a very subtle tortoise shell. That bit of flair just proves his point.

“I always want you to be you, David.”

David tips his head back and closes his eyes, the way he does when he needs to process a compliment of that magnitude. After a beat, he looks at Patrick, smiling.

“Thank you.”

“Of course,” Patrick says, leaning in for a kiss. It’s a quick peck initially, but when they go back in for another, Patrick’s nose bumps one of the lenses, and David pulls away.

“Ewwuh,” he says under his breath, pulling the glasses off, reaching over to the case on the nightstand, and taking out a cleaning cloth to wipe off the smudge.

“Consider this practice,” Patrick teases. “One of these days, one or both of us may need prescription glasses.”

“Okay, can I just get through _this_ crisis of aging before we move onto the next?”

Gently, Patrick takes the glasses from him. He moves slowly, to give David the chance to stop him, but when he doesn’t, Patrick places the glasses back on David’s face.

“‘Crisis’ isn’t the word I’d use,” Patrick says, gazing appreciatively.

David rolls his eyes, but of course, he’s also smiling. He takes the glasses off again and sets them on top of his book on the nightstand. Patrick pouts.

“You looked like you were pretty comfortable in those.”

“Oh I am,” David says, leaning back in, his warm, deft fingers finding their way under the hem of Patrick’s sweater. “I’m just done reading for the night.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. 🤓


End file.
